I can’t speak for everyone of course but, at my age, I find it both interesting and amazing when a young person asks about an old computer game like DOOM.
This story is in fact so interesting, I’m having trouble picking a good place to start, so, I’ll start at the beginning!
Last summer a close friend of ours took a quick trip to France in order to bring a distant relative to the states. Our friend didn’t give too much info (she never does, FYI) and so we were naturally curious when our friend came back a few weeks later (I guess that’s what some people call a quick trip?).
As it was, the others and myself were sitting around two computers using DOOM Builder before our friend arrived with Gabrielle. Yeah I know, she sounds like the angelic blonde every father wants as a daughter but knows he’ll go through hell by the time she’s fifteen… Well, she is rather angelic and blonde but that isn’t quite the point. The point is, we met her, our friend yacked and yacked about her trip and Gabrielle seemed bored with the conversation (her English is rather poor) so she took a gander over to the computers and asked “What we were drawingâ€.
You might be wondering why this is in the mods and wads forum by now, but, just wait for it.
The drawing she referred to was the incomplete (and admittedly terrible) map design sitting in DOOM builder we had been fighting with all day.
To make a long story somewhat short, we found out she likes to draw and is quite good at it. Kamila ended up giving her a second boxed copy of the 2004 DOOM Collectors edition (the doom 3 preview one) and a week or so later we helped her get set up and play around with it on her own very old laptop.
We ended up explaining as best we could the whole doom builder thing again to her and she said she had found a guide by a doctor online on how to use it. (She meant DR. Sleep, I believe) so we ended up setting up DOOM builder on her laptop.
Fast forward to this evening around 5PM, she came over with our friend and had a thumb drive in her hand and said she wanted to show us something. So after dinner, Kamila copied over a wadfile called demon laden (spelt wrong of course).
All I can really say is, I’m actually stunned. I mean, at 11, I don’t think I could’ve done what she had done in a matter of months with all that learning involved. Shoot, I don’t think I could do that now =P
Anywho, it’s only two levels so far for DOOM II. They’re smallish like what you might find in the Sythe series. We just wanted to share it and see what the DOOM community thinks!
It’s mapped completely in regular DOOM2 format so the best play experience will probably come from using chocolate doom. We helped her write up a small text file for it.
Here is the link for the download:
http://files.drdteam.org/index.php/files/get/3WsnLzv77y/demonladen.zipThere’s a lot I could say but I’ve typed about 600 words already here =P
I think she avoided making a mistake unlike myself and the rest of our group by starting mapping in vanilla compatible mode first and learning how it all works instead of starting off in ZDoom or Legacy.
Anyway, feel free to post feedback and whatnot. I realize it might not be much compared to folks around here who have been mapping for 15+ years but, for an 11 year old and 6 months of tinkering with something completely new to her, it isn’t half bad in my opinion =)
Little Temple Group
EDIT:
Also, we forgot to add a part in the text file that yes
Difficulties are supported.
Coop is supported
And DM
EDIT#2
Gabrielle told us she forgot to flag difficulties on the monsters in MAP02 so in the current file, playing on different difficulty settings wont change the number of baddies in MAP02 =P Oops!
She says she'll bring by an updated version when she finishes a few more maps. Glad to know she's going to keep at it!
